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smoking headlight switch


l67ss
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Was driving my car tonite when i noticed my speedo backlite kept going out. Pulled into mcdonalds and saw smoke coming out of the headlite switch. Pulled the bezel off and saw something glowing behind the switch. Anyway now no smoke(or glowing which only happened when i turned on the lites) and everything works aside from cluster backlite. Wtf? Thanks

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My sons 97 Cutlass has the same problem & we've still not found where to ground it properly, the mounting plate around the switch gets hot to the touch. We just don't drive it at night much.

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Most likely it's a bad ground causing high resistance causing lots of heat. Not sure where the headlight switch grounds exactly, but I would check your ground connections and clean them as necessary.

 

Alternatively, the headlight switch may have some corrosion of its own on the contact points in the switch. If the ground connection is spotless and definitely not the cause, I would try to swap out for another headlight switch. Either way, keep a close eye, just the type of thing that can burn your car to the ground.

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mine started doing the same thing last year.... sometimes turning the lights off for a few seconds then back on would fix it for a while. i eventually pulled the headlight switch and modified it internally so that all of the backlighting would be powered by the same circuit that the headlamps run on(which is breaker protected). it disables the dimmer function, but at least it quit happening.

 

i do have a spare here now from Eric, but since the car doesn't get driven at all, swapping it in to see if it was the switch or the wiring won't accomplish anything.

 

did the HVAC or window/lock switch backlighting go out as well?

 

sttubs: PM me, i can get you some diagrams you'll need.

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Grabbed headlight switch from a low mile 99 monte, pulled mine and found nothing wrong with the wiring. Installed said 99 monte switch and now everything works again. :) In fact everything is brighter, including my headlights. My old switch did have 264000 miles on it. Ill see how long this fix lasts. :) btw these switches are a *%#&@ to remove. Lol Oh, and the burnt wire smell is gone with the old switch outta the car. :)

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Yeah i wasnt 100% on if it fixed the prob it was trippin me out with no dasb lites.

I had replaced my switch earlier this year & it still does the same thing so keep an eye on it. Somewhere there is a short & thanks to RobertISaar I have a path to follow.
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